The
Irascible ProfessorSM

Irreverent
Commentary on the State of Education in America Today

by
Dr. Mark H. Shapiro

"A
rose by any other name would smell as sweet."...
...William Shakespeare.

Commentary of the Day - June 18, 2009: Fees or Tuition - Let's
Call it What it is.

When
the Irascible Professor first enrolled at the
Berkeley Campus of the University of California in
the fall of 1957 he paid $52 per semester in student
fees. This covered both the Associated
Students fee and health care at Cowell Hospital on
campus. (In those days there was a
full-service, acute care hospital on campus even
though Berkeley did not have a medical school.)
A few semesters later the student fee was raised
from $52 to $54 per semester, where it remained
until his graduation in January of 1962. There
was no tuition in the University of California
system at that time, and fees were strictly for
incidental services. Thanks to that the
Irascible Professor was able to get through his
first year at Berkeley on about $600 in savings from
a summer job fighting brush fires and two small
scholarships that totaled about $250.

The
social contract between the state of California and
its citizens with regard to higher education was
quite clear when the University of California was
established in 1868. The taxpayers of
California would cover the direct costs of educating
students at its public university, which would be
open to all who qualified academically (the first
students -- all men -- were admitted in 1869 and one
year later enrollment was opened to women)
regardless of financial status. In return,
graduates of the University of California would
provide the state with a steady supply of men and
women who would enter the professions or who would
help to grow the economy of the state by their
activities in the business world. They
would more than repay the taxpayers for the cost of
their education through the higher taxes that they
would pay to the state on their earnings after
graduation. As California grew the
University of California expanded to a system of 10
campuses that included graduate and undergraduate
programs as well as distinguished professional
schools. The social contract was extended to
an even larger system of state college campuses
(which later became the California State University
system) and to the largest system of community
colleges in the country. The goal was to make
higher education as accessible and as affordable as
possible.

The
social contract worked well for more than a century,
but it began to break down following the passage of
Proposition 13 in the early 1970s. Before the
passage of Proposition 13, K-12 education in
California was funded primarily from local property
taxes. Following the passage of Proposition
13, the burden for funding K-12 education shifted to
state government. Populist "reforms" in the
early part of the 20th century made it extremely
easy for California voters to pass both legislation
and amendments to the state constitution. With
Proposition 13 on the books, the floodgates were
opened for special interests to convince voters
through well-financed public relations campaigns to
pass a number of other constitutional amendments and
initiatives that gave state legislators less and
less flexibility to fashion a state budget.
Proposition 98, promoted by the state's K-12
education establishment, guaranteed the K-12 sector
a fixed percentage of state revenues. Another
ballot measure required a two-thirds super majority
for the state legislature to pass a budget bill or
for taxes to be raised either by the Legislature or
the voters. Yet another voter-passed measure mandated
life sentences for all those convicted of three
felony offenses, which lead to the explosive growth
of the state prison system. But the voters
neglected to provide any new source of revenue to
pay for the cost of new prisons or for the
additional
personnel needed to staff them. Various other
initiative measures have placed further demands on
state revenues.

All
this "ballot-box budgeting" has left the Legislature
with little flexibility when it comes time to pass a
budget. One of the few areas that is not
mandated or constrained is the state's higher
education budget. As a result, the
budgets for both the California State University
system and the University of California system have
suffered over the past decade or more, because the
Legislature needed the money to fulfill mandates. The
resulting gap in support for public higher education
in the state
has been closed by charging students for a part of
their direct educational costs at these
institutions. Those charges have increased
rapidly over the past ten years. At the same
time, the Legislature has attempted to maintain the
fiction that public higher education in California
is "tuition-free" by calling these charges
"educational fees" rather than "tuition."

Currently, undergraduate students at California
State University campuses pay more than $3,000 per
year out of pocket for something called the "State
University Fee" and another $500 in various
incidental fees, while the state contributes a bit
more than $8,000 per student per year to campus
operations. By calling the $3,000 payment a
State University Fee, the Legislature is able to
maintain the fiction that higher education in
California remains tuition free. But in
reality, the State University Fee is a charge for
instruction, so it meets the dictionary definition
of a tuition payment.

Until,
recently this was just a matter of semantics.
But with the passage of the new GI Bill, a number of
California veterans who are attending private
colleges are finding that they are ineligible for
tuition assistance from the federal government.
The reason is that the new GI Bill limits tuition
assistance to veterans attending private colleges
and universities to the highest amount charged for
tuition by a public college or university in
the state. Since, no California public college
or university charges tuition, the amount
available under the GI Bill to California veterans
attending private colleges or universities is $0,
nada, nothing.

This
is a case where a rose by another name doesn't smell
as sweet. Real people are losing real money
because California insists on calling what is in
reality tuition something else. It's past time
to be honest with ourselves. Here in
California students attending public colleges and
universities are charged tuition. It is true
that the taxpayers still underwrite a majority of
the costs for students in California's public
colleges and universities. But each year, as
has happened for the past several years, the student
contribution increases by another 10%. So,
unless there is a dramatic change in California's
fortunes, it won't be long before undergraduate
students are paying a majority of the direct cost of
their education at a California State University
campus or at a University of California campus.